Spansion Inc., a leading provider of parallel and serial NOR Flash memory, today announced it has entered volume production of its 512 Mb Spansion FL-S Serial (SPI) NOR Flash memory featuring the highest-density single-die serial Flash.

The Spansion FL-S family spans from 128 Mb to 1 Gb and features an industry-leading programming speed that is three times faster than competing solutions and has 20% faster double data rate (DDR) read performance. The speed improvements are key to enriching the user experience for a growing range of embedded applications, such as automotive instrument clusters and infotainment systems, industrial and medical graphic displays as well as home networking gateways and set-top boxes.

Specific applications that can benefit from the Spansion FL-S product family include the following:

- Automotive: Instrument clusters and infotainment systems, which rely on 3D graphic engines for displaying real-time driver information and demand high reliability, real-time fast rendering and lower pin counts. These capabilities are required for giving consumers stylish designs with improved graphics and an instant on experience with their digital dashboards.

- Consumer: Home gateways, digital TVs, set top boxes and printers, which require smaller packages in a high-density serial interface and advanced security features to protect content, allowing manufacturers to give their end consumers a secure and instant-on experience.

- WiMax systems: Increasingly require smaller packages such as BGA with high reliability.

Executive Quotes:

"Serial flash memory is being used in broader range of applications due to advances in density and performance, and the Spansion FL-S family is likely to find broad acceptance," said Jim Handy, director of Objective Analysis. "Spansion's combination of tight process geometries and MirrorBit charge trapping technology is clearly helping the company to introduce very high-density, high-speed Serial flash in small packages that make SPI a popular choice in high performance designs."

"Adoption of the Spansion FL-S family has been strong with over 15 of the top chipset companies supporting Spansion's industry-leading serial Flash memory," noted Bob France, vice president of strategic and product marketing. "The collaboration with chipset partners is delivering innovative reference designs that will result in higher-performance electronics that start nearly instantly and provide fast access to rich, high-resolution graphics."

Key Facts/Performance Metrics of the Spansion FL-S family:

- The 128 Mb, 256 Mb, and 512 Mb Spansion FL-S products are in production. A 1 Gb dual die solution is also available based on market demand.

- Industrial and Automotive In-Cabin temperature support (-40C to +85C/+105C)

- Up to 1.5 MB/s write speed that is three times faster than current SPI solutions in the market, increasing manufacturing throughput and lowering overall costs.

- 20% faster read performance with up to 66 MB/s for faster execute in place (XiP) operation, surpassing competing solutions by over 20%.

- Up to five times faster chip erase coupled with the three times faster programming speed dramatically improves chip re-programming time during manufacturing.

- Industry-standard form-factors via Spansion's Universal Footprint

- 16-pin SO (300 mil)

- 8-pin SO (208 mil planned for 128 Mb)

- 8-lead WSON 6x8 (128 Mb and 256 Mb densities only)

- 24-ball BGA 6x8

- The low pin count simplifies board layout, lowers cost, and reduces the form factor of many embedded designs, reducing to eight pins for a 128 Mb SPI Flash device.